On June 11, 2019, the Austrian Post Ag's crypto stamp, aka crypto stamp, appeared in retail with a limited number of 150.000.
According to the Austrian Post AG, this corresponds to the tariff for a letter of category L for the EU and rest of Europe with the dimensions: max. Format L 353 mm × W 250 mm × H 30 mm, weight max. 2kg.
The design of the extraordinary Stamp with the iridescent unicorn motif in rainbow colors (note: the unicorn is the heraldic animal of the ETH community) and the QR code for scanning the digital counterpart came from Julia Obermüller and was produced by Variuscard Productions in combination with screen and offset printing.
The high-quality finished product was printed on credit card-sized plastic cards and is provided with hologram foils, two scratch fields and special coding for the highest possible security. Behind the two scratch fields are the access data to an pre loaded Ethereum wallet on which the digital twin of the stamp is located. And to enable the use as a regular stamp for shipping, the back of the physical stamp is provided with adhesive surfaces.
Stamps sold through well-known distribution channels
Reserved exclusively for the blockchain-based on chain sales
The stamp is a regular, usable stamp that has a digital counterpart, a so-called crypto token, as a bonus. Unlike the physical stamp that always looks the same (except possible misprints), the token comes in different colors, all of which can be found in different quantities in the series
The digital counterparts color can be researched with the help of the information printed on all stamps via the blockchain based portal of the Austrian Post (specially created for this purpose). To do this, either you can scan the QR code printed on the crypto stamp or type the stamps four to six-digit code into the search field provided on the Post website.
The digital wallet holds the Ethereum based counterpart of the physical crypto stamp a so called non-fungible token - NFT.
The digital token of the crypto stamp comes in five different colored versions. These are black (the most common one), green, blue, yellow and red(the rarest of them all).
Scan the QR code printed on the face of the crypto stamp to view the one of a kind digital version of the collectible.
The choosen medium for the physical stamp were premium quality credit card-sized plastic cards, optically finished with hologram foils and provided with the highest possible security standards available.
The first edition crypto stamp production run was limited to a whopping 150,000 pieces which sold out in a matter of days.
The most exclusive and unique edition of the stamp was given away at the Austrian Post kick off event, sporting an aditional print with a special date seal on its face.
The digital counterpart of the physical stamp is stored on a digital wallet, to be precise an Ethereum paper wallet. This wallet can be accessed via crypto browser extensions like "MetaMask". However, if you just want to take a peek at the content of the wallet and don't intend to send the assets it contains, you can also do this via the free services of etherscan.
The access data(public key and private key) of the respective wallet are located under the scratcj fields of the physical stamps. And each wallet contains a small amount of ETH (Ethereum) and of course the CS1 (Crypto Stamp Edition1) token. The pre charged 0.00166 ETH currently correspond to an approximate value of € 0.24. This preloaded credit is required to pay the transaction fees for sending the CS1 token at least once.
500 stamps of the entire series (ID's 149.500-149.999) were sold exclusively in the Post's own OnChain shop via Ethereum-based smart contract and the first stamp with the ID 149.500 found a new owner on June 11, 2019 for the regular price of € 6.90.
Now one would assume that all following stamps were issued with leading ID numbers. However, this proved to be wrong. Because the next stamp sold had the ID 149,999. From then on, all the remaining stamps were sold in descending order with a fixed price of € 6.90 down to ID number 149.600. As soon as ID number 149.599 was reached, the payment terms previously specified in the smart contract changed. After each following sale there was subsequent 8% price increase for the next stamp.
This rapid increase would have meant that the Austrian Post AG would have booked the fabulous price of € 13,011.82 for the last stamp.
35 stamps have not yet been sold. The next stamp has the price of € 943,03.
Another special feature of the OnChain sale is the possibility to transmit the delivery address of the physical stamp via the ethereum blockchain. In this case the address is not only forwarded to the post via blockchain but also encrypted on the ethereum blockchain.
More details about the different blockchain stamps available can be found on our website. If you want to browse through a complete list of all available cryto stamps, you can do the same here.
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